Even in some non-saturated areas, ‘direct’ does not work as local TC has more’n enough staff to handle the volume. In my area, they wrongly consider me as their competition.
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There is no guarantee a Title company will deliver on its promise to use you ‘for all their signings.’ Sadly, the card is handed over, the promise made, and the phone never rings. I don’t know if they sometimes are too busy to look up a local notary and just pass the job over to the signing service, or someone new books the appointments, or it’s just being polite. In thousands of signings I have had repeat business from a handful of clients who called me direct. I’ve had better luck being the go to notary for a signing service than any direct marketing, unfortunately fees have drifted downwards. If there are special circumstances like multiple signers, scan, distance I will negotiate the fee. My counter offer is accepted at least 70% of the time if the request is reasonable.
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I like how Jim Rohn the late motivational speaker put it, " “I used to say, ‘I sure hope things will change.’ Then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change.” His message apply to our business as loan signing agents/notaries. If the fees for loan signing assignments are to low, don’t complaint about it, find a solution to change it. It’s our business and our livelihood. We are the masters over our business, not any title companies or signing services. That’s the beauty of being a business owner, we have the freedom and flexibility to make changes on how we generate revenue. When fees started to decline, I found solutions to overcome the drops in fees.
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Here’s one solution that happened over the course of the last 2 days.
A take it or leave it lowball SS offered $25 for an offbeat ‘deliver the letter’ job…with scanbacks & photos, too. As there was no way to counter-offer AND a bad ice-storm was happening…for the first time EVER, NOBODY in my area accepted it.
Over a 2 day time period, the offered fee went from $25 to $40 to $60 to $80 and finally to $140. My point, of course, is to PROVE that if everyone says NO TO LOW, the fee goes up.
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Ahh, the low fee controversy. I’ll weigh in with these questions and observations:
What is the low fee threshold for GNW? Say you get a call to do a two signature signing a mile and a half from your home. Would you do it at the maximum fee allowed in your state? What’s your travel fee? I’m in Southern California and we’ get $15 per signature here plus travel fee. My travel fee is minimum $10. So I get $25 to go 1 1/2 miles for a quick signing. (I charge more if I go farther). Is that worth it? For me, yeah. If I could do 10 of those a day, all very short trips, I’d gross $250, net about $220. Not bad, especially when not doing them gets me -0-. Those numbers may not work for everyone, I get that. Just one way of starting to look at revenues.
Now, let’s move over to signing service orders. I’ve picked up a nice recurring source of $70 HELOCs (I’ve done 12 = $840) all within about 6-7 miles or less (one way) and all very easy jobs. Are they worth it? You bet! For me anyway. I net roughly 60% (Notary Gadget computation) and I stay busy and productive. The signing service posts lots of these orders and I grab all I can. They keep posting more and I keep grabbing them. Good for me. Maybe that doesn’t work for everyone; you gotta figure your own costs and thresholds. Like Mr. Wonderful says on Shark Tank, “You gotta know your numbers.” The point is, low fees are not always so bad. Get efficient and think long-term. Nobody can survive on low fees but, some of us can make that work.
And, there is, of course, notaries universally unifying and rejecting ridiculous lowball offers. However, it is not realistic to think that, as an industry group, we will all stand together and reject those fees. The signing services don’t really care. They’ll get somebody to take the order and if they don’t, they’ll incrementally increase the fee until they do. That’s a costly prospect for them and they’ll soon tire of that game. But don’t for a minute think independent notaries will coerce the signing services with a flat rejection of lowball orders. In my opinion, ain’t gonna happen - at least not in my neck of the woods.
In the end, it’s a beggars banquet. But things are beginning to look a bit brighter (way faster than I predicted) and if rates drop another point, which they probably will by May, I’m sure gonna be ready. 
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Why? There’s a simple answer to that. It’s because notaries will take less. The game is called “How low can you go?”. They will keep dropping fees until nobody will take the jobs anymore. When that happens they will keep the fees at whatever level the notaries last accepted the jobs.
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Someone who has agreed to utilize your services only. Based on the following: professionalism (mannerism, speech, personality, dress, articulation). Knowledge of the business the and how it is conducted. Reliable and dependable always in time. This type of client will then refer you to their clients. This is how I got my directs. 2 clients I hve a signed contract the others I don’t but they hve committed to giving me their business. Represent well in everything. This my my personal definition of a direct client someone else may hve a different view on this. Wishing you the best.
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Etorry, Let me propose this question; does your experience apply to every market in the US? There are many notaries who demonstrate a high degree of professionalism, as you’ve accurately described, are struggling with low frequency engagements, low fees, and saturated notary locations. There are veterans of this business on this page, with decades of experience, who are stating that this has been the slowest market demand they’ve seen in decades. When I saw the market changing I moved towards handling legal engagements. Even this has slowed.
I tend to think that your situation is likely an outlier or your location in Manassas, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC, having a much higher than average income demographic and fed by federal employment, would have better opportunities for NSAs, than other areas across the US.
As @Bobby-CA has stated, he’s taking $70 HELOCS. In Texas HELOCS have to be closed in the offices of a Lender, Title Company, or Law firm. Lenders and TCs are amenable to providing curtesy services of this nature. The $70 fee barely covers the use of the law firm’s office. Most Texas HELOCS contain in excess of 175-200 pages.
My specific location in central Texas has a healthy new home market. What’s unusual here is the builders/developers are the lender, Title Company, and have in house NSAs earning $15/hour. That’s about $120 to $150 per day. That’s about the minimum, per closing, I need for me to consider taking on an assignment.
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Exactly! Had this happen a week ago as well. 1st it was $40,$60,$80 then they finally reached out to me the next day with the price I told them. $300 & they agreed. It was a 20 mile drive, but they paid for the only option they had.
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Thank you. Appreciate that you have added proof that they most definitely can pay considerably more than they offer (repeatedly). Now if everyone would just learn this lesson, we’d all see profitable fees being offered.
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Have anyone noticed due to the increased numbers of new LSAs, companies has expressed there’s been an increase in loan signings being performed incorrectly. Due to those mistakes, lenders and title companies are now inputting sending out more training aides. These errors have caused funding delays for the borrowers. I have seen more emails coming from title companies or signing services complaining about these errors. When I started back in 2015, the challenge was getting the experience due to most companies requiring two years of experience with the completion of at least a 100 assignments. If you made more than 3 assignments with errors, the LSA was dropped from being able to work for certain companies. Obliviously, things have changed…
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The only time a signing service pays a decent fee is when they can’t get someone to drive out to the “boonies” and the offer sits. They will lose the deal if they can’t find a notary so they pay more. The problem is that the services are taking advantage of the fact that there are too many notaries to support the amount of work available. Until the mortgage market improves, they have no incentive not to offer low fees.
Companies can pay higher fees, if they want too. For example, today, a company called me for a hybrid loan signing assignment. I asked what was the distance from my location, she stated 5 miles. My next question was what is the fee being offered, she replied $85 and she heard my verbal sigh over the phone. This company has my signing fee schedule on record. She immediately changed the fee to $125, I didn’t have to go through the “song and dance routine”. I have been working with company for years. Most of my assignments come by getting phone call offers. I accept very few assignments by text, emails, or website portals.
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Yes, You can negotiate fees. There are companies that are very open to that…BUT, I am a professional as are the companies who offer those fees. I expect to be treated as one. Offering a fee of $75 for a refinancing, for example, is communicating, you are not taking what I so seriously and you don’t see me as a partner in your business, which is what we are. I work for me, I partner with them.
My average refi with 2 people are on the average 6 notarization each = 12. The fee in California, per notarization is $15. This equals $180 just for notarizations alone. This means $75 goes to me and they $102 goes to them. Not to include printing, driving, and time, which they also bill for. There are times that I see billing for Notary services up to and over $300. If they just bill the minimum, we are still receiving well under what our expenses are and we are worth. I refuse to do any service for less than $100. Negotiations should come into play on a larger than expected pkg or a long distance client. These companies know how much our fees are. We are running a business and so are they. They need to partner in good faith.
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Low fees are here to stay. Personally I would never do this signing below $200 & that is on the low side. We also had 12 inches of snow today, not worth the drive, paper, ink, ect. I would not even accept this lowball offer, if it was across the street & I could walk to the closing..
Another notary accepted this offer. 190 pages X 2!!? That’s a whole ream & I bet half of the documents are legal paper..
Some thoughts:
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I wonder if the demise of the 6% commission fee for RE (see the news today) will affect anything. Probably not but who knows.
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Are there any places with stats on the frequency of mistakes made by LSA’s? I’d wager that has increased in the past few years, resulting in lower fees for everyone.
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Much of the LSA market relied on the obscurity of the job (not many people knew about it). That scarcity is no longer the case, and that’s caused a reckoning in the prices for our service. Not an easy fix here, the cat’s out of the bag.
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In populated areas with a saturated notary market, there’s also not an easy fix, aside from the fees getting so low as to push some LSAs out of the market entirely, easing up on competition. In more rural areas, LSAs (in theory) have more leverage, but signing services still make that difficult.
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Signing services are literally providing a service that the industry sees a need for – if the need wasn’t there, the industry would dry up. Thus, as long as the industry sees signing services as a way to get cheaper and more efficient notary closings, the signing services are probably here to stay.
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There’s too much blood in the water among LSA’s in general on this issue - instead of fighting among each other about the people accepting low fees, the focus should be on the industry as a whole. If there’s a cohort out there that can jump through the (relatively small) hoops to become an LSA in most states and get extra spending cash by doing a $50 or $60 closing, the situation won’t easily change. Either the barrier to entry has to get steeper, the lowball-accepting LSAs have to leave the market, or market forces have to act on the title/loan companies to pressure more for the service. But don’t necessarily blame the LSA’s, we are all in this together, it’s not “us vs them”.
#2: Following came from a popular platform via e-mail in late Feb, 2024:
Performance of notaries in Q4 of 2023. 2/3 of signings had signing errors.
Documents Signed Incorrectly - 67%: A significant portion of signing errors stemmed from documents being signed incorrectly.
Document Delivery Issues - 27%: Document delivery issues, including delays or failures in delivering signing packages, is a prevalent concern that can deem a signing unsuccessful.
Behavioral Situations - 6%: Behavioral situations, such as conflicts or poor demeanor during signings, also contributed to error rates.
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@Arichter Thank you for sharing this data.
These points are clearly reflective of the basis that there is a very low ‘barrier to entry’ for launching a new business without any experience into this business sector/profession of Professional Signing Agent [PSA].
Many choose NOT to hold themselves to a higher standard. Others ensure that they are comprehensively trained and fully comprehend the process and activities of providing these professional services.
There are a relative few who do choose to hold themselves to higher standards for myriad reasons - some of which are as follows:
- They want to establish a professional reputation
- They want to achieve success for their clients as well as for themselves
- They choose to perpetually continue their education
- It’s important to them to have the knowledge that they’re providing optimum services
- They want their clients to know that they can be relied upon indubitably
- Etc.
Thoughts on #5: Too many Agents AND a new SS every week, BUT SS all seem to draw from the SAME platforms. Sooo…how do we educate TCs to skip the SS…go directly to platform and pay better?
I think the focus has to be on the TC/LC’s bottom lines, because at the end of the day, the money is mostly all that matters. If the Signing Services save them time and/or money, it’s probably going to be a tough sell to get them away from them. I’d be curious to see if there’s a difference in LSA mistakes/errors/omissions that are direct to TC/LC versus those obtained from signing services. I’d suspect there’s a negative correlation between the pay accepted for signings and the number of mistakes/errors/omissions made (lower pay means higher number of E&O), but again, it’d be interesting to know that for sure.